Margaret Warner Morley

Margaret Warner Morley (February 17, 1858, in Montrose, Iowa – December 12, 1923, in Washington, D.C.) was an American educator, biologist, and author of many children's books on nature and biology.

Biography

Morley grew up in Brooklyn. She studied at State University of New York at Oswego and Hunter College. She continued her biology education at the Armour Institute (now the Illinois Institute of Technology) in Chicago and at the Woods Hole marine laboratory in Massachusetts. She worked as a teacher and was considered an expert in agriculture and beekeeping. She was most well known for her work as an illustrator, photographer, and author of books on nature.

As early as 1890 she visited Tryon, North Carolina with the painter Amelia Watson where she resided in the cottage of playwright William Gillette. She finally acquired her own home in Tryon where she lived for many years.

In one of her many trips she went to Europe to the Val Gardena the valley of toy carvers where she was inspired to write the novel ''Donkey John of the toy valley''.

A collection of Morley's work is held at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, Connecticut. The collection consists of travel logs and sketchbooks of rural North Carolina, and book manuscripts.

The North Carolina Museum of History owns a collection of original photographs that Morley donated to the museum in 1914.

Morley died on December 12, 1923.

Drawings

Drawings by Morley from the original Val Gardena toys from ''Donkey John of the Toy Valley'':

Image:Drawing of Val Gardena toy by Margaret Warner Morley.jpg
Image:Val Gardena stick doll by Margaret Warner Morley.jpg
Image:Drawing of Val Gardena toys by Margaret Warner Morley.jpg

Writings

* ''Song of Life'' 1891
* ''Physical culture'' 1893
* ''Flowers and Their Friends'' 1897
* ''A few familiar flowers: how to love them at home or in school'' 1897
* ''Seed babies'' 1898
* ''Little Wanderers'' 1899
* ''The Honey Makers'' 1899
* ''Down north and up along'' 1900
* ''Wasps and their ways'' 1901
* ''Insect Folk'' 1903
* ''Little Mitchell, the Story of a Mountain Squirrel'' 1904
* ''The Renewal of Life: How and When to Tell the Story to the Young'' 1906
* ''Donkey John of the toy valley''. Chicago A. C. McClurg & Co. 1909
* ''Grasshopper Land'' 1910
* ''The Carolina Mountains'', Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co (1913)
* ''Will o' the wasps'' 1913
* ''The Bee People'' 1914
* ''the Apple-Tree Sprite'' 1915

References

Further reading

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External links

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Margaret Warner Morley Collection
at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

{{DEFAULTSORT:Warner Morley, Margaret
1858 births
1923 deaths
American educators
American nature writers
Hunter College alumni
People from Lee County, Iowa
Writers from Iowa
American women science writers
People from Tryon, North Carolina
American women non-fiction writers